I went to see the film 'Queer' on the second day of it's UK release in a packed Belfast cinema with some doubts. What I wanted most was to see a film where 'Christmas' did not exist. Willian Burroughs was famous for his difficult writings, where a short passage by him was easy to follow, but when a short reading becomes a long paragraph the readers attention span and concentration are soon tested beyond everyday endurance. Would this film be as difficult to watch as Burroughs famous cut-up texts were to read? I used to like difficult films, and like the person that Burroughs projected himself as being, as an author. But I was caught between admiring him as how he projected himself as an artist, whilst I wondered what the off-duty William Burroughs was like.
Daniel Craig has an energy and presence as William Lee/William Burroughs that cannot be doubted. Craig is in every scene in the film, though in some scenes he is in he makes his entry part way through. The script comes mostly from the 1985 novella 'Queer', a sequel-of-sorts to the novella 'Junkie'. 'Junkie' was Burroughs first published work, published in 1951, and it portrayed with clarity unusual for the times how chaotic Burroughs' personal life was and what life was like for the criminal underclass where become addicted to any illegal substance turned into a life of petty crime, in support of the criminal drug habit. At the time of writing and living 'Junkie' Burroughs life was chaotic enough that it took decades for Burroughs to organise himself enough to reclaim the rights to that first work and republish it, heavily revised, as 'Junky'.
So, 'Queer' is set in the Mexico of 1951. The outside of the buildings seem to be period enough, and the cars look wonderful, though the streets seem to be relatively clear of traffic. Since Burroughs was part of an ex-pat American drinking set, where they drank together the streets and bars could have been that clean, light, and pleasant to be in. Could have been pleasant enough for sociable drinkers to play chess whilst having a slow afternoon drink. But I did wonder how clean such streets would have been back in the day.
Critics had made much of the filming of the sex scenes, where what was filmed was not simulated. As a viewer I got the point; Burroughs was both in lust and in love, caught between intense neediness and reverence for his handsome new lover, Eugene Allerton, played by Drew Starkey. Before they go to bed Eugene sees the drug taking kit in one corner of the room as Burroughs fixes them both a strong drink.
Thus begins the start of a wary but deepening friendship between Burroughs/Lee and Allerton where Burroughs/Lee seeks the companionship of the younger man, and the younger man has watch as Lee reveals the everyday details of his drugs habit including the long term consequences of addiction for Burroughs/Lee. There is only one scene in Mexico City where Burroughs/Lee crashes a party, already drunk and difficult and looking for Eugene whereas up to that scene he seemed controlled of his drink consumption in public. That scene becomes a turning point for the next part of the film.
For as long as there have been laws against taking recreational drugs there have been people who have strived to get around those laws and around their unintended addiction to the drugs-the admission of which is complicated by the laws that prohibit the consumption of said drugs.
In Act two the lover is allowed to watch as Burroughs takes the drugs in his room, extending the level of trust and intimacy between them. By this time Lee/Burroughs knew he had to leave Mexico City, I was happy for this change of scene since by the time that decision was made the musical soundtrack of the city had taken some odd turns for being Mexico in 1951, as the music that attempted to reflect the dramas Lee/Burroughs was going through became an eclectic 1980's pop soundtrack that seemed odd, if it was meant to reflect Lee/Burroughs mental state.
To shorten this review, Lee/Burroughs invites Allerton to join him in the jungles of South America, to take a mysterious substance known as Yage, that Lee/Burroughs tries to impress upon the medicine woman 'Would give the individual telepathic powers, because that is what he had read the CIA as saying it does, and the CIA also say the Russians are seeking it out for 'mind control' reasons.'. This made me laugh inwardly at the absurdity of the scene, and yet admire the chutzpah of Lee/Burroughs' pretensions; in any real jungle what the CIA said about America, Russia, or what the cold war was about would seem so far away that they are irrelevant. The jungle is your law and guide. The film begins to take on elements of being like a video game from there onward. But that is more a reflection of how much live action video games have changed the depiction of drama in film making, than any reduction of the narrative of the book the film is sourced from.
Then comes the centre of the film, the depiction of ego loss for both of them, which is well done and the original music enhances the visuals very well; time seems to disappear as their bodies move on the screen in an a sense of absolute interiority. Then there is the snap back to reality. Lee/Burroughs leaving the jungle alone and heading back to Mexico City looking and acting as if his time in the jungle had cleansed him, from the inside out. There he seems calm, lucid, and friendly but distant.
After that there are a series of postscript scenes, dream sequences, where I assume that each scene refers back to his time in the jungle, referring back further to some of his actions in Mexico, dreams in which remorse came back to him from some of the life he pursued with friends and attempted partners. The uncanny intensity of these dream sequences, shaped by his having been an addict of heroin and opium, where taking the opium was originally meant to 'be a cure for the addiction to heroin', were astonishing too.
In the last airless image he dreams of his own death. Cue a very long series of credits.
